


Reality Check

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Nick/Greg Ficlets [13]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 00:31:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19139977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: The moment that you want is coming, if you give it time.





	Reality Check

**Author's Note:**

> Got inspired by a few songs on my walk today, and this came out of it.

Dreams and reality were becoming harder and harder to distinguish. He can’t say he’s even surprised anymore, when bad things happen. He’s been conditioned to just...not react to these horrific situations, or even the  _ idea  _ of them. A series of unfortunate events--of burials, shootings, beatings, abductions--made him wonder if the Las Vegas Crime Lab had just been cursed to a life of suffering. 

It had started with the lab explosion, nearly five years ago now. An accident, one that scarred him emotionally and physically. It’s times like these he feels a tingle on his back, riding the ridges of uneven skin. He feels the ripples of the explosion through space and time, knocking him down, knocking his friends down...but this time, nobody is burned.

Instead, it’s Warrick Brown, bleeding out on an operating table. The team is watching on the other side of the glass. They’re always doomed to watch. 

“He’ll be okay, right?” Greg’s voice, heavy and exhausted, lulls Nick Stokes to his side. He said it as a question, but meant it as a statement. No matter what happens, they always get back up. Nick is living proof of that. 

“I don’t know, man, this looks pretty bad.” Nick laments. Greg looks at him, his face seems to shine even brighter in the overexposed light of the hallway. The harsh light of the operating room, reflects fire in his concentrated eyes. His tongue brushes over his lips, nervously, before his mouth hangs open, as if to say something more.

Greg looks back through the glass, and sees a sea of bowed heads, a flatline tone. He hears the distant cries of Catherine. Grissom and Sara are nowhere to be found. 

He tries to wrap his fingers around NIck’s hand, but he can’t seem to move. At first, he thinks it’s just his defense mechanism, freezing, when terrible things happen. Maybe if he doesn’t react, the ripples will cease, the dust will settle, and everything will be okay. 

He consciously tries to move his hand, to flex his fingers, a reality check, to ensure that this is not a dream, but they don’t seem to move. A tick, he had picked up, from long shifts in the lab, where his hands never seemed to stop moving. A tick, that had then turned to a conscious effort to prevent his hands from  _ constantly  _ shaking under nonexistent circumstances. A tick, that he now uses to distinguish dreams from reality, a trick he read in a book somewhere. 

“This is just a dream,” he announces out loud, though the surgeons are gone, Warrick is gone. Only one other person occupies this dreamscape. He turns his head back to Nick, who is looking at him with a puzzled expression. 

“What? What are you talking about, G?”

“This is just a dream…” Greg repeats, before moving his face closer to Nick’s. He still can’t seem to move his hands, so he’s gotta express what he feels through words instead. “And I love you.”

They spread apart as the ripples shake the earth beneath them, the tiles of the hospital floor fall away, the halls extend and contract. The overlit lights crack and break, tiny explosions creating more tiny ripples, that make Greg’s body rock back and forth, lifting him up in the air before he crashes back down…

“Greg?”

The last light breaks, and Greg is teleported to another world. He’s in a car, with Nick, driving on an uneven road. The SUV is handling the terrain fairly well, though the ride is not without its bumps.

“Are you sure you’re up to this man? I mean, I understand if you just wanna head home, you seem tired.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Greg yawns. “Just...needed to shut my eyes for a minute.”

Nick flashes him a smile, before cranking up the volume on the radio. A soft, easygoing tune, to match their relaxed mood. He shakes off the odd sense of deja vu, allows himself to become grounded in reality again. He stares out the window, sees a car a fair distance away, driving on a paved road.

The sight of tires on paved road remind him of why he is in this car with Nick. They had recently closed the case of decapitation by blown tire. He grins, recalling their light-hearted exchanges, the friendly back and forth about what they did to pass the time as kids, after seeing some youth riding around on go-karts. His grin expands as he recalls watching Nick chase after a suspect shortly after, because when Nick runs, it’s like watching a junkyard dog who had just been unleashed, pumping legs and jumping fences. Nick had caught up to the suspect even before the unformed cops. He was barely out of breath by the time Greg had caught up with him, after he had taken the long way around.

Perhaps that’s why he had been plagued with such terrible dreams, being slightly out of shape. Though he had started to change his eating habits at the behest of his partner, Greg was still cautious about physical activity beyond a nice, peaceful walk. He hated exercise.

So, naturally, when Nick asked him if he wanted to go on a hike, Greg said yes. 

Greg blinks, and they’re suddenly walking. Nick’s prepared, as he always is, with a backpack and two bottles of water. Greg feels underprepared in comparison, with nothing but a bottle of water that he had already drank half of on the way there. Maybe he can charm Nick into sharing…

“You see that hill up there?” Nick asks, pointing it out. 

“Yeah?”

“Race you there,” Nick suggests, doing a quick stretch before assuming a runner’s stance.

“What?” Greg blurts out, not expecting this sudden demand of physical exertion. 

Nick twists around, seeing that Greg had stopped a few feet behind him. He grins, a wild fire spreading from his eyes to Greg’s as he grabs Greg’s hand.

“Run!” Nick exclaims, before he pulls Greg closer to him. Greg stumbles at first, but Nick is already at full pace. He yanks Greg’s arm so hard, Greg thought it nearly popped out of its socket. He propels Greg ahead of him, before Nick passes him up on his left side. He turns back, his mouth stretched into a smile, his tongue poking out between his teeth. He winks, and his speed increases.

Greg follows him, mostly out of spite. He pumps his arms up and down, his legs burn, feeling as if they are going to solidify and cement him into place. The sun’s rays are harsh and hot, his body begins to sweat within the first minute of running. His heart is pounding so hard, Greg can feel it nearly burst out of his chest. He wants to stop and just fall to the ground. Maybe Nick would turn back, pick him up and carry him up the hill.

But instead, Nick’s still running, though he’s slowed down a bit. They run up the hill together, and that’s when Greg understands why Nick loves running. They stare into the vast Nevada landscape, a familiar scene, but with a new perspective. What Greg once thought was just a boring, dry desert seems so...vibrant. The sky is more saturated, the tumbleweeds bounce through the soft waves of the wind. Small creatures, scurry around through the earth, poking their heads out. Nick spots a large bird, through binoculars Greg didn’t even see him take out.

“Beautiful,” Greg pants, as Nick finishes his lecture. With the constant change of actions, and dialogue, he can’t help but wonder if this is another dream. Better make the most of it while he can.

“What is?” 

“This...just...all of this...but mostly... _ you _ .” 

He consciously tries to move his hand, to flex his fingers, a reality check, to ensure that this is not a dream, and his fingers soon find themselves wrapped around Nick’s sweaty hand. 

A feeling, communicated through such a small gesture, but because this isn’t a dream, and he’s sharing this moment of absolute nirvana with Nick Stokes at his side, he decides to verbally describe that feeling anyway.

“I love you, Nick Stokes.”


End file.
